“As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption”...so said Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before he was assassinated.

Be placid. Don't complain. Spy on your neighbors and report everything. Let the politicians do your thinking for you. Don't read the paper or watch the news. Don't form opinions. Accept that in order to be safe you must give up your personal freedoms.

Now, ignore what you just read and THINK FOR YOURSELF! Don't let them PUSH YOU AROUND. USE YOUR BRAIN. READ A BOOK. QUESTION AUTHORITY. And especially, READ CONSPIRACY JOURNAL EACH AND EVERY WEEK!

This week Conspiracy Journal brings you such tongue-tickling tales as:

- The Strange Link Between The Moon and The First Nuclear Test-- Demons from Hyperspace and The Mechanisms of Magick-

- Private Detective Claims to Use Psychic Powers to Solve Crimes -

AND: Did You See the Wollaton Park Gnomes?

All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of CONSPIRACY JOURNAL! ~ And Now, On With The Show! ~The Lore Of The Poltergeist

LIGHT YEARS BEYOND ANY OTHER BOOK ON POLTERGEISTS AND HAUNTINGS!

If you are a reader who has greatly enjoyed – or has been inspired by – the works of John Keel, Dr. Nandor Fodor, Jacques Vallee or Hans Holzer, you will find this work to be an outstanding breakthrough book on the paranormal. Likewise, if you are just looking for something to titillate your sense of fear this is guaranteed to be a real page turner.

SIX MEMBERS OF THE DEFEO FAMILY WERE MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN THEIR HOME IN AMITYVILLE, LONG ISLAND.

DEMONS WERE SAID TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HIDEOUS SLAYINGS INSIDE WHAT WAS TO BECOME KNOWN AS AMERICA’S MOST POSSESSED DWELLING.

There remains a great controversy as to where the truth lies about this grizzly crime. Were all the events, as recounted in the bestselling book and the subsequent movies, true? Or was a hoax created for the purpose of cashing in on a horrific event that had captured the public’s imagination?

ALL NEW FINDINGS

Poltergeists come in all shapes and sizes and inspire varying degrees of horror. What might be surprising is that poltergeists are NOT necessarily the spirits of the dead nor the overworked, disordered personalities of the living often thought to have become possessed by demonic forces. That which we call a “poltergeist” could just as easily include a wide range of other unearthly phenomena, such as random denizens of the dark moving through time and space and other dimensions, as well as a manifestation of cryptids, known collectively as shapeshifters and “bedroom invaders,” and possibly even representatives of numerous alien races.

It is not always possible to remove a poltergeist utilizing such “tools” as blessed crosses and holy water. Such items may only serve to provide more energy to the “parasites,” who are often attracted to the mentally disturbed, and enable the spirit fiends to have a virtual “field day” that includes the tossing of heavy objects across a room, igniting fires, throwing knives and paperweights, causing animals to seemingly “talk” and, in extreme cases, even raping their helpless victims. As one researcher put it, “A teddy bear can work just as well for a child as holy water for a Catholic!”

Here, in pictures and text, are the most bizarre, the most terrifying and the most perplexing cases of poltergeist activity that you are likely to encounter, as investigated by the top paranormal researchers of today without bias and without relying on pre-existing conclusions as to what might be causing such unpleasant transgressions. And please note that these bloodsucking parasites can attack not only the most innocent of souls or the average dwelling, but have also been known to follow hysterical individuals across the vastness of the country while maintaining a stranglehold that in some cases is almost impossible to break.

This Newly Released Book is Now Available for the Bargain Price of Only$16.66

The Strange Link Between The Moon and The First Nuclear TestBy Brett Tingley

Despite being one of the two perpetual occupants of Earth’s skies, the Moon still remains somewhat of a mystery to us feeble-minded Earthlings. Scientists and astronomers still debate about the unknown origins of Earth’s satellite, with the most popular theory being the Giant Impact Hypothesis. This theory speculates that some massive object slammed into the Earth at some point in distant cosmic history. Pieces of the smashed object and the hunks of Earth which it tore loose were all pulled together by their own gravity and over time formed our own Moon, or so the Giant Impact thinking goes.

One problem with this theory is the fact that analysis of the Moon’s various soil and rock samples show very little evidence of so-called volatiles – organic compounds or elements such as zinc or water which evaporate easily. These are highly abundant in most places on Earth, but not on the Moon. If the moon were to have its origin in a giant impact, many of these volatiles or, at the very least, their chemical traces should have been found on the Moon in similar concentrations.If the Moon was indeed formed by a Giant Impact, chemical evidence should suggest so.

To help resolve this hole in the Giant Impact theory of the Moon’s creation, a team of chemists and geologists from the University of California San Diego decided to look for similar evidence in a much more recent event: the 1945 Trinity nuclear test. The researchers guessed that conditions in a nuclear blast in the desert might simulate conditions similar to those of a giant cosmic impact, so they began analyzing the composition of trinitite, the green radioactive glass formed by the Trinity test.

Their analysis found that trinitite samples, like lunar soil, are curiously devoid of any volatile compounds. High-temperature evaporations such as those caused by a nuclear blast or a hypothetical cosmic collision could explain the absence of certain volatile chemicals or elements.

According to UC San Diego professor and head of this study James Day, this likely indicates that the Giant Impact Hypothesis could actually have scientific validity, at least on a chemical level:

"This has been conventional wisdom, but now we have experimental evidence to show it."

Their data and results have been published in Science Advances. If this data holds up to further scrutiny, it could mean a complete reconception of the Moon. If it is proven that the Moon used to be a part of the Earth, it might explain the strange and unexplained connections so many living things seem to share with our closest cosmic neighbor.

On another interesting note...NASA scientists are calling for the moon to be ­reclassified as a planet. Investigator Alan Stern argues the Earth’s moon — along with the moons that orbit Jupiter and Saturn — has “all the features of planets.”

Authors note: The spelling of magic is deliberate and designed to separate it from the stage illusion and trickery employed by illusionists.

Forward

'The devil and his demons can, according to the literature, manifest themselves in almost any form and can physically imitate anything from angels to horrifying monsters with glowing eyes. Strange objects and entities materialise and dematerialise in these stories, just as the UFO's and their splendid occupants appear and disappear, walk through walls and other supernatural feats' [John Keel, 'UFO's, Operation Trojan Horse', p.192].

At first sight the title of this article reads like an example of bad science fiction cinema from the 1950's, but the reality is perhaps closer to the truth than one might imagine. Some of the concepts are not easy to embrace and this is not surprising because in order to do so, the reader must be prepared to accept possibilities that might conflict with their personal world view. However, there is one thing that might make the paradigm shift easier. If the reader already unquestioningly accepts the existence of a God and therefore Jesus Christ, and accepts that the acts and miracles of God, Christ and the saints are in essence magick, then what follows is little different.

From the outset we should be prepared to accept that both UFO's and their occupants do not necessarily originate from other star systems or galaxies, or at least, not in the accepted sense of vehicles traversing the gulfs of interstellar space. Likewise we should also be prepared to accept that these 'machines' if that is what they are, and the 'beings' they contain, might not be real in any meaningful sense. In fact the entire enigma may hinge on how we interpret reality, for there may be more than one reality and each one may be slightly different depending on how one perceives it.

Reality Bites

Our standard perception of reality is that it exists in the form of a tangible object or thing, like, for example, a steel ingot, which has mass, is solid and therefore 'real'. The material forming the ingot, which is of course energy, exists at a specific frequency and we exist at the same frequency therefore we perceive it as solid and not as the swirling mass of sub-atomic particles that it actually is. However, under the influence of hallucinogenic substances or perception altering techniques, that same reality may be viewed in a different, non-physical manner and the same may be true of our perception of what we call 'the supernatural'. Likewise, what we actually see with our eyes and recognise as a solid object (e.g. our ubiquitous steel ingot) does not exist in this manner once it is in memory.

Rather, its shape and mass is reduced to a collection of stored electrical signals with which we create our internal world model. Perhaps this is one of the great ironies of our materialist world, a 'solid' object that consists of energy, once observed, is both stored and retrieved as energy, and as we have seen this is the nature of reality. If this is true, and what we see, smell, touch and feel is achieved through a series of electrical analogues that can vary with the individual, then it may indeed be possible to re-arrange and alter the physical world by the application of will. Perhaps the best method of understanding the flimsiness of reality and how fluid it is comes from an observation made by the late philosopher and author Alan Watts (1915-1973), who said, 'Reality is a Rorschach ink blot'. Although he encapsulated the entire concept in six words, as we have seen, the possibilities are endless and bounded only by the imagination. I make no apology for dwelling on this subject because it is absolutely fundamental to appreciating what magick is and how it functions.

The Method

For millennia we have apparently been visited by entities that have no natural home here on this plane, they are the demons and devils of old. Those that did not come here, for whatever reason, by themselves, have been deliberately invoked by people who breached the thin, invisible curtain separating the dimensions without fully understanding how they achieved it, nor in many cases fully appreciating the consequences of their actions. An early account of contact with beings produced by rituals and for want of a better word, 'magick', comes from the chronicles of the Elizabethan alchemist and magician, Dr. John Dee. According to these records, Dee along with his 'scryer' or clairvoyant Edward Kelley, encountered 'little men' who travelled around in 'A little fiery cloud'. The contact allegedly achieved by Dee was attributed to the use of 'Enochian'; a cabalistic language that he created and claimed was the language used by angels.

It should be understood that the use of the term, angels, is misleading, since the beings encountered by Dee and Kelley were almost certainly not angels in any conventional sense and definitely not emissaries of God. The actual contact with these beings allegedly came through the efforts of Kelley and not Dee, they were first seen by Kelley while 'scrying' using a multi faceted, crystal 'trapezohedron' rather than a traditional, spherical, crystal ball. The reference to angels might also be a misunderstanding and may actually mean 'angles' and the entities they encountered may originate from alternate dimensions made visible using the odd refractive and reflective geometric properties of Kelley's artefact.

In addition, the use of the term 'angels' to describe what they encountered was probably due to their lack of the concept of alternate realities and dimensions other than the biblical heaven and hell. Those who, like Dee and Kelley, achieved this feat were convinced that they had unlocked the very gates of Hades and cowered within pentagrams of protection while their 'visitors' were present. Having said that, it should be understood that given the alleged magickal abilities displayed by the beings they produced, they might as well have emerged from hell. Quoting freely from an observation made by the astronomer, author and visionary Arthur C Clarke, the effects of the technology used by such entities is indistinguishable from magick. However, in spite of the perceived risks, the potential rewards and kudos offered by using the powers and abilities of the entities far outweigh any danger.

Given the sketchy information, whether the experiments of Dee and Kelley actually succeeded in opening a doorway into another dimension is open to question, but at the turn of the nineteenth century, one of the few places where this may actually have been successfully achieved was at Boleskine Lodge on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. It was here that another self-proclaimed magickian, Aleister Crowley, operated the ancient 'Abra Melin' ritual and allegedly opened a portal in the fabric of space-time and brought through a host of entities into this continuum. The claimed 'reward' for the successful operation of this ritual, the purpose of which was to turn a number of demonic entities to God, was the appearance of the celebrant's guardian angel.

The story goes that during the ceremonies Crowley sprinkled fine sand on the terrace overlooking the loch to determine whether the entities were present or not. He reasoned that although they were invisible, he would be able to see their movements in the sand as they moved around the terrace. Existing accounts report that even on the calmest of days both Crowley and his assistants frequently saw the sand shuffle around under the steps of invisible beings. It is also said that during the ritual, which incidentally lasted around six months, the lights within the house were permanently left on even during the daylight hours because of the unnatural darkness permeating the building. Whether all this was entirely effective is open to debate, but it is certain that Crowley was absolutely sure of his own abilities as a magickian and from existing accounts he may indeed have been successful in his endeavours. There are still persistent rumours of frightening, half seen 'things' in the woods and hills surrounding Boleskine House and Loch Ness that just might be some of the entities that escaped from his thrall.

Crowley is also credited with undertaking the 'Amalantrah Working' during which he contacted an inter-dimensional entity called 'Lam'. He later made a drawing of this being and it shows what is clearly a 'grey' alien, which, if accurate, appears to corroborate current thinking on the origin of both supernatural entities and extraterrestrials, but we shall return to this later. During the ritual, Crowley made use of Dee's Enochian language, and in fact called the beings he encountered during this ritual 'Enochian entities'. It is probably significant that during this particular ceremony Crowley used a variety of substances including cannabis and mescaline to produce the desired effects. This parallels the type of natural psychoactive chemicals used by shamans to take them on spiritual quests to consult with the entities dwelling in these altered states of being and awareness.

Jack Parsons, another latter day magickian who was one of the founders of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena California, while working with L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology, performed the so called 'Babalon Working', (which incidentally was also designed by Crowley,) and deliberately introduced more 'entities' into this world. In this instance, entities known as the 'Old Ones' were brought through a dimensional gateway that had been sealed in antiquity to prevent them accessing our space/time continuum.

The legends surrounding these beings strongly suggest that aeons ago, when they were here, they wrought horrific destruction but were eventually overcome and banished by other forces less inimical to humanity. However, another school of thought suggests that these entities may not have deliberately sought to harm mankind and any suffering was entirely incidental to their designs. Indeed, they might even consider our planet as their own and humanity as vermin to be removed with no more thought than we would give to mice. While once again the veracity or otherwise of these claims is almost impossible to determine but if they, like Crowley, (whom incidentally they both knew) did actually succeed, then it is of great importance to discover the mechanics of how it was achieved.

Perhaps one method was discovered quite recently (during the 1990's) and appears to come from work carried out by the Britain based Scole Group, who were told via a series of séances that humanity as a species is constantly threatened by encroaching entities inhabiting continuums existing alongside our own. Once again it is vital to realise that movement between dimensions is not at all straightforward and although they are all quite distinct they are guarded by various states of energy existing a different frequencies. Although the barriers are both invisible and intangible, because of their nature they might as well be made of Ferro-concrete ten miles thick. The revelations of the Scole researchers also indicate that we are surrounded by these normally inaccessible dimensions, some are relatively benign and some are not and it is to one of these realms that we travel when we eventually die. While our consciousness journeys there naturally, the method used to pass through the dimensional barriers at will requires technology, not magick, not a spell hidden in some dusty, cobwebbed grimoire, but technology.

The Mechanism

To do this we must strip away the theatricality associated with traditional ceremonial magick and instead examine the words and intent of those conducting the ceremony. The clothing and accoutrements have no effect whatsoever on the efficacy of a spell and serve another purpose, the end result lies entirely in the skill of the magickian, who, as we will see is actually more akin to a scientist that a mystic. What we must do is look at the possibility that magick per se and some of the props used in the rituals might actually serve as focal points for consciousness and will. It is also likely that the chants and incantations used in spells are effective, again not because of the content, but instead because of the sounds themselves. The use of potions in magickal ceremonies may have some herbal or medicinal value, but more importantly, as with shamans, provide a means of producing altered states of consciousness.

Except for one or two items, the variety of bits and pieces added to traditional magickal brews, aside from putting the person swallowing the stuff at risk from poisoning, were largely valueless. It is only on examination that one can determine the active ingredients, e.g. the bark of certain trees like the Willow contains one of the precursors for the common drug aspirin and the addition of certain fungi would produce hallucinogenic effects, as would the skin of a species of toad. In addition, rhythmic chanting is also an adjunct to achieving altered states, and once the celebrant had achieved the desired state (and the consequent release of consciousness) then he (or she) could begin the process of making magick. The wording and intonation of the spells and incantations is a slightly different matter, and may directly interface with the fundamental truths of frequency and resonance.

Once again, if we can accept that all reality, whether subjective or not, is constructed within the electromagnetic spectrum and is therefore frequency, then the frequencies generated by the words might actually interact directly with and alter reality at the subatomic level. Before leaving this we should consider one thing, the reason behind the attempts made by Dee, Crowley, Parsons, Hubbard and all the rest was not mere curiosity, but almost certainly a quest for knowledge and power. It is certain that there is little altruism behind attempts to conjure extra-dimensional beings, but instead there are usually three possibilities; knowledge, money and power in any combination. Perhaps it might also be fair to reduce these three points to one; knowledge, for as most people realise, knowledge is power. This is regrettable but understandable, for rather than acting in the spirit of pure research these practitioners showed their only too fallible humanity, which was of course their ultimate undoing.

It is from accounts like these that one might reasonably conclude that there is a pattern in magick, ritual or otherwise, connecting sorcery to UFO's and their occupants. Careful research reveals that not only do the majority of those who regularly encounter both UFO's and ET entities also have a history of psychic occurrences, but the ability tends to run in families. This is best illustrated by the gift of the 'second sight' (clairvoyance) traditionally passed on from mother to daughter. In fact it might be reasonable to go further and suggest that modern day Ufologists and experiencers might have studied Demonology and alchemy had they lived in earlier times.

Is Chaos Magick the Key?

While the process of ritual magick is traditional and ordered, modern day thinking on the effectiveness of the magickal process has embraced another technique, 'Chaos Magick', and it is this particular style of magick that may even have real, scientific credibility. One of the chief axioms of chaos magick is 'Fake it till you make it', in other words absolute belief in something that does not exist or has not yet happened can and will make it occur. Belief is a tool that will sculpt reality into whatever you want it to be, the rather alarming problem here is the possibility that nothing is true because nothing is static. This is demonstrated in the famous 'butterfly analogy' which suggests that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China could cause minute atmospheric changes which over a period of time could effect weather patterns in New York and it is from this base that chaos magick allegedly functions. One magickian of the 20th century who had considerable influence of the traditions of chaos magick was the late Austin Osman Spare who introduced the use of 'sigils' into the process.

The sigil is, in effect, a condensed spell or expression of intent which is produced by writing down the desired effect or wish as a sentence on a piece of paper then gradually whittling it down. After concentrating and meditating on the words, the magickian then re-writes it with the vowels removed, then with any repeating letter deleted. The remaining letters may then be formed either into an anagram or perhaps into a design, which is finally condensed further into another figure containing the essence of the original. It short, the purpose of the exercise is the creation of a figure of potency representing the desire.

Finally, the magickian deliberately invokes an altered state of awareness, but there is no set method to achieve it, drumming, chanting, hyperventilating, continuous rhythmic movement, or even hallucinogens are all effective. It the case of Austin Osman Spare, he literally danced himself to exhaustion then adopted a physical stance bordering on an extreme yoga posture until the desired state was reached. In fact it does not matter what method is used, but as with all attempts to alter perception it is the end result that is important, not the method, although for purists the use of chemicals is frowned upon.

During the process of entering the altered state of consciousness, the magickian concentrates on the sigil and not on the wish, for effectively the two are now one. He should make the sigil stand out like an incandescent beacon burned into the screen of his minds eye and enter the altered state in this fashion. The rationale behind the technique is to banish the memory of the desire from his conscious mind and allow his unconscious to relay it into the invisible world that surrounds us. It is vital to the success of the fulfilment of the spell that the magickian should have no conscious memory of it. As we shall see, it is the partitioning off and release of the spell and it's eventual consignment to the void that touches on particle physics and contains the greatest element of risk.

Another analogy is the often-quoted proposition that any serious investigation or demonstration of paranormal phenomena can be completely sabotaged by the negative presence of a debunker. Because of their own prejudices, at heart debunkers do not want positive demonstrations to succeed; therefore they will inadvertently prevent it. In other words, the tiniest change in the all-pervasive energy field that surrounds us can have an effect, both positive and negative, on reality. The debunker is therefore inadvertently operating his own brand of chaos magick. This seems to suggest that prayers might work in exactly the same manner, since it has been observed that when someone is prayed for, usually in the case of illness, that person has a greater likelihood of recovery in a shorter time that someone with the same condition who is not prayed for. This is particularly impressive when the person who has been prayed for has no prior knowledge of it but gets better anyway. The faithful will attribute this to the intercession of an Almighty God, but instead it is achieved by will alone, by changing the balance of probability. Not surprisingly, the more people who pray, the greater the chance of success, does this imply that prayer is a form of Chaos Magick?

As I suggested earlier there is already one branch of science that appears to corroborate some of the claims of magickians and that is Quantum Theory. This discipline demonstrates that at a subatomic level it is possible for a human being to directly affect the behaviour of particles, and furthermore, the very presence of an observer can affect the outcome of an experiment depending whether he actually watches it happen or not. This then is how Chaos Magick functions and depending on the practitioner and their ability the results can be spectacular. However, as with the unforeseen consequences of the butterfly's wing beats, once the magickian has released the spell into his subconscious he loses all control over it, which demonstrates the latent danger inherent in the practise of these arts.

Sympathy for the Devil?

Yet another branch of sorcery is 'Sympathetic Magick' which in effect attempts to blend (or impose) the characteristics of one object with another and it could be argued that this is another form of Chaos Magick. This is demonstrated in a number of ways viz. by 'poppetry' and 'transference'. In the case of transference, the traditional method was to tie a ribbon or small piece of cloth to a 'holy tree', usually located beside a 'healing well'. The ribbon or cloth was assumed to have taken the medical condition of the sufferer into its substance and the magickal properties in the tree or well would effect a cure that would be transferred to the person. On the other hand, poppetry was the construction of a small doll or figure, sometimes containing something from the person it was intended to represent, this was usually a lock of hair or perhaps a fingernail. With the aid of a suitable incantation, the doll would take the illness away from the person afflicted. In a more sinister guise, sticking with pins or burning to deliberately harm the figure would transfer the damage to the intended victim in the same manner, as with prayer, the person was frequently affected whether they were aware of the spell or not. Even today in the secular world it is still considered bad luck or inappropriate to burn photographs of people in case the destruction of the image causes the person misfortune.

Dwellers in the Dark

If the barriers are as intangible as we think and if a suitable method can be found to allow passage between them and what might actually live there? It has been suggested that what we now define as extraterrestrials (ET's) are the creatures that terrified our forbears as demons and devils. It is fair to comment that the descriptions of the demons, imps and angels of antiquity are totally interchangeable with modern ET's; the only difference between our ancestors and us is a relatively greater degree of acceptance about what these things are. Although we should know better, sadly, there is still a marked degree of superstition enmeshed with the superficial gloss of sophistication and it seems that there is also a culture of denial relating to anything that smacks of the paranormal or the supernatural.

The culture of denial stems from the traditional manner in which science approaches the subject, in fact, science appears to be set against itself in internecine warfare. There are the 'traditional' scientists whose training leaves them no choice other than outright rejection of concepts that appear to deny their Newtonian principles and this includes quantum physics. On the other hand, the majority of quantum physicists whose chosen discipline points the way to understanding the enigmas of paranormal research, by inclination refuse to accept the implications of their own conclusions. On one hand they can accept the near impossibility of time travel, (Albert Einstein's theorems demonstrate as much) yet they cannot accept that we are surrounded by invisible entities and beings that inhabit the dimensions their equations tell them are there. If the hints that particle physics provide are to be believed, these may ultimately be the ultimate key, the true 'Seal of Solomon' required to open the barriers between dimensions and allow 'magick' to function.

Conclusion

If one thing becomes clear from this, it is the fact that we and everything around us interact at the most basic and fundamental level of all and it should be no surprise that we are affected by the moods and whims of both people and the environment. The teachings of Eastern religion have recognised this from the beginning and the Buddhist concept that 'all is one' rings particularly true. Another truth that becomes apparent the more one studies the phenomenon is the ultimate similarity between all the diverse methods of magick.

Like religion, (which, in spite of clerical refutation is magick by any other name) individual magickal processes each proclaim themselves to be the ultimate method and guarantee of success, when in fact they are all basically they same. They all work to a greater or lesser degree and for the same reason, the only difference, as with religion, is in the packaging. However, at the end of the day, perhaps it is we who are the real 'Dwellers in the Dark', throwbacks to the savages who hid in caves from thunder and lighting, and it is the entities that surround us that are the enlightened ones.

More reports of a ghost plane being sighted in Derbyshire have emerged after an eyewitness claimed she saw a large, silent aircraft flying towards her, before it disappeared completely.

There have consistently been reports of ghost planes in Derbyshire, with people often identifying the plane as a Douglas Dakota - once flown by the RAF.

And as the reports continue to show chilling similarities, we've found a news documentary from the 1990s which claims a Dakota did crash in the area some 70 years ago.

Pam Orridge said the news of the new sightings prompted her to remember a sighting from a few years ago.

She said: "My son and I were driving along the A6 towards Rowsley from Darley Dale.

"We had just passed Church Road on our left and well before Arconic Forgings and Extrusion also on the left.

"Suddenly in front of us was an aircraft flying very low towards us. So low we thought it would crash into us but then it banked sideways and disappeared. We could not identify the aircraft other than it was old because it happened so quickly and left us quite shocked."

But then as she discussed the latest sighting by Sandra Holland in Rowsley last week, she discovered others in her family have had the same experience.

Pam added: "Whilst discussing your article with the family my grandson told me he had experienced the very same thing when he was a passenger in a friends car travelling along the very same spot last year.

"None of us obviously thought any more about the incidents because the Dakota and Hercules aircraft do occasionally fly down the valley through Darley Dale towards Matlock, but they can be heard and their sound is quite distinctive."

The reports follow a sighting by Ms Holland.

Bakewell woman Sandra Holland said she spotted a large, unmarked, silent aircraft above the Peak Shopping Village almost two weeks ago.

She said: “We were on the way back from the doctors’ when my daughter just shouted, ‘what’s that?’

“I have never seen anything like it. It looked like it wasn’t running quite right and was going to run into us.

“It was sideways on and then it vanished - it was very strange and a real shock to us.”

Peak District online says there have been at least 50 plane crashes in the area of the 'Dark Peak' - dubbed the UK's Bermuda Triangle.

Many of the crashes remain unexplained and an investigation into magnetic anomalies found that naturally occurring magnetic rocks in The Dark Peak can cause local 'deflections' of compass direction - however no more so than any other area so the theory has been rules out as a cause for major air crashes.

The world's most eminent scientists are not usually associated with the dim-lit surroundings of a clairvoyant's parlour.

But some of science's biggest names have not only dabbled in, but been entirely convinced by the world of the seance.

Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird are familiar to most for the household indispensables they invented. But the attraction to spiritualism they all shared is definitely not part of the GCSE science syllabus.

All three men, and many other Victorian scientific pioneers, became involved with the religion, which depended on strange forces being demonstrated through bizarre phenomena.

But how did the world of certainty and precision collide and, in some cases, fuse with that of levitating spiritualists and voices from the "other side"?

To some, it was simply down to chronology. When the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York State - widely considered to be the founders of modern spiritualism - first claimed to have communicated with the dead, the world was awash with scientific endeavour.

Just four years earlier a communication of a very different sort - the first electric telegraph - was sent across the Atlantic.

Science was challenging the old certainties about life - making the impossible, possible.

According to the biographer of the Fox sisters, Barbara Weisberg: "There was so much that was exciting and so much that wouldn't have been thought possible two decades before.

"If people could communicate over the telegraph, why couldn't this world and the next world communicate?"

This gave the sisters' claims greater legitimacy, she says.

As the spiritualist craze grew people from every level of Victorian society crammed into dingy parlours, where knocks and raps indicated the presence of spirits.

Messages from the dead were spelt out using lettered cards while strange voices were mumbled in the dark.

But it was in the search for proof these phenomena were real and not cons, that the world of the spiritualist and the scientist came together.

"If there was any truth in phenomena that appear to defy the known laws of nature, the known laws of gravity, then scientists believed that they had to be the ones to investigate."

When the bizarre phenomenon of table-turning hit the parlours of Victorian England, the leading experimental scientist of the day, Michael Faraday, was called in.

After attending two seances, the deeply Christian Faraday devised an experiment to see if there was a rational explanation. He decided there was and dismissed supernatural causes as nonsense.

Some 15 years later, the feats of medium Daniel Dunglass Home reached new heights as he was seen to levitate out of one window and back through another. Many believed he was simply a hypnotist.

This time the eminent chemist, William Crookes, who unlike Faraday was keen to discover a psychic force, subjected Home's activities to his own test.

He devised a machine he called a radiometer to measure the "invisible forces" the medium appeared to be tapping into.

Another gave a reading when the maestro appeared to move a lever without touching it.

"Here's an instrument Daniel Dunglass Home can't possibly mesmerise because it's not a living being. How can you hypnotise an instrument?" says Dr Noakes.

"So Crookes reckons he got the traces of a psychic force in operation."

Crookes went on to invent the cathode-ray tube, pioneer research into radiation effects, photography, wireless telegraphy, electricity and spectroscopy.

Logie Baird, who built on Crookes' work to create television, was also persuaded by his seance experiences.

Not only did he claim to have communicated with the spirit of US scientist Thomas Edison, but after visiting a seance in 1926 he wrote: "I am convinced that discoveries of far reaching importance remain waiting along these shadowy and discredited paths."

But Logie Baird was trying to do exactly what mediums of the day were doing - transmitting sounds and images through space. Only the source of these, if you believe the medium, were different.

At the end of the 19th Century when Guglielmo Marconi was experimenting with the first radio signals, he was shocked when he started to receive signals.

The author of Spirit Communication, Roy Stemman, says Marconi concluded these were from the spirit world.

"He spent his last years trying to perfect an electronic device that would establish a permanent contact between this world and the next."

This was never achieved, but his work pioneered the telecommunications that still link the globe today.

Dr Noakes says that whether or not the scientists declared the whole thing to be bogus, the example they set was "extremely powerful to the next generation of scientists".

Despite years of research, no scientist has proved seances were anything more than an elaborate con trick.

But the work they did trying often contributed to a greater understanding of the laws of physics.

Private Detective Claims to Use Psychic Powers to Solve CrimesBy John Kapetaneas and Lauren Effron

Troy Griffin walked across a bridge in Colorado, searching for a body.

He brought search dogs and a team of volunteers with him, but his main set of tools are his visions.

Griffin is a self-proclaimed psychic detective. Shunning the crystal ball, tarot cards and tea leaves of his fellow intuitives, he says he uses his psychic powers to solve crimes.

"I've worked on … about a 100 cases overall," Griffin said.

He says he's built a business out of bringing the paranormal into police work, charging up to $250 an hour for his investigative work.

He recently worked a missing person's case that gripped the nation. Kelsie Schelling, 21, was eight weeks pregnant and disappeared in February 2013 after making a late night drive from her home in Denver to see her boyfriend in Pueblo, Colorado. Her family never saw or heard from her again.

Four years after her unsolved disappearance, Schelling's mother Laura Saxton is still searching for her daughter and is grateful for Griffin's help.

"We just want her back, and well do whatever it takes to get her back," Saxton said. "Any time you can find anybody who sincerely wants to help it means a lot because people come and go very quickly."

Using Griffin's supposed psychic intuition and some anonymous tips, they searched a sparsely populated area in Pueblo, Colorado, where Griffin was trying to clue in on any sign of Schelling.

Griffin said his visions are "like watching TV, but just little clips,” and he’ll get overwhelming feelings of nervousness and anxiety.

"It's nothing to do with the victims, it's just how I know or how I use my directions," he said. "When I pick up the feeling I have to go and follow that ... So I have in my mind a vision of where I think her body may be that’s what I’m searching for."

As they combed through rocks and riverbeds at two different points of interest, Griffin appeared to pick up a bunch of different energies.

"I feel nauseous, sometimes I feel like I can't breathe," he said.

But hours of searching led to no real clues pointing to Schelling’s whereabouts.

"I don't feel Kelsie here at all," he said finally.

Back at his office located outside of Denver, the walls are covered with files, maps and addresses from what he says are his cases. Griffin said he had previously made contact with Schelling when he first met her mother.

"When I contacted Kelsie, it was more just apologies -– ‘I'm sorry mom, I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't know,’” Griffin said. “[Her mother] Laura is never going to have closure unless she finds something.”

In the six years he’s been in business, out of 100 cases, Griffin claims he has an 18 to 20 percent success rate, but defended those numbers.

“When you look at murder cases and unsolved missing persons, they're very few percentage that actually get solved,” he said.

But of the roughly 100 cases Griffin claims he worked on, Griffin could not provide one example to ABC News to verify that he contributed to a police investigation. Even with the Kelsie Schelling case, when contacted, the Pueblo police department told ABC News they had “no official contact” with Griffin and were “unaware” of his investigation.

When asked how police departments typically receive his offer to help, Griffin said, “It really depends on what a detective or detectives believe in,” but that he was “lucky” if he got a “50/50” shot.

Rhonda Sheya said she is a former client turned friend of Griffin’s, and that she turned to him for help the day after her brother-in-law Danny Sheya mysteriously went missing in December 2014.

“He said, ‘I believe that he is within a few minutes of your home, a few miles, maybe five miles of your home. I see him surrounded by water and a few miles from your home,’” Sheya said. “I was like, ‘Water? There was no water on the route that we were searching.’”

Tragically, Danny Sheya’s vehicle had gone off the road on a dangerous stretch of road in Colorado and was found two days later by passerbys. Rhonda Sheya credits Griffin with helping them find closure.

"It does cross your mind that this a little bit out there," she said. "It's not exactly what mainstream people believe or think. It was desperation. You get desperate. At some point you're grasping at straws. You don't care. You just want your loved one back.”

Psychic-based crime solvers are not a new phenomenon. There was five seasons worth on the Court TV reality series called "Psychic Detectives." There have been other hits such as "The Mentalist" and "Medium." They were even spoofed on "South Park."

But psychic readings, especially those in the public eye, have not been exempt from scrutiny. One example was a 2004 reading famed psychic Sylvia Browne performed on "The Montel Williams Show" for the mother of then-missing girl Amanda Berry. Browne told Berry’s mother that her daughter was dead, but nine years later, in May 2013, she was found alive.

Prior to her death in November 2013, Browne released a statement saying in part, "I have been more right than wrong. If ever there was a time to be grateful and relieved for being mistaken, this is that time."

But still, Berry's mother died believing her daughter was dead when she wasn't. Critics called Browne a "grief vampire" taking advantage of a grieving parent. Griffin denied that's what he's doing in the Schelling case.

"I waited for her mom to tell me what she thought,” he said. “I don't say you're dead or you're alive. I say I have feeling. I'm never going to tell you if you're dead or alive. If I feel strongly, I'm still not going to tell you.”

But he did tell Schelling's mother how she was murdered, saying that he believed strangulation was involved. If it turns out he’s wrong, Griffin said it would be time for him to "consider a different career."

"I don't take advantage of people that are grieving. Most are referred to me from what I did. I don't charge them,” he said. "I'm not coming with false hope either way. I'm not here to tell you yea or nay. I'm here to help.”

Griffin said he’s not taking any money from Laura Saxton or any other grieving Schelling family members. He said he makes most of his money doing psychic readings, which he charges $140 an hour for people who come to him.

Famed skeptic Joe Nickell's office in Buffalo, New York, is a shrine to cases he claims to have debunked over the years, including psychic detectives.

“What people should realize is psychics cannot do what they claim to do,” Nickell said. “They have been reviewed by mainstream science, and they can't do it. If they can do it, let's see that they do it.”

Nickell said psychics use a series of mentalist tricks often referred to as “retrofitting.”

"[It] could be defined as ‘after-the-fact matching,’” he said. “In other words, the detectives have a missing person. They assume the person might be dead, but they're looking to find that person. In comes the psychic, often ingratiating himself or herself with the family, forcing the police, pretty much, to have to pay attention to the psychic.

"The psychic will say things like, 'I see water. I'm getting the number 7. I see some sort of tall structure,' and so on. They call these clues," he added.

But Griffin said he's isn't bothered by critics who don't believe in his work.

"What I say to skeptics is, if you have never been in the people's shoes that I walk with, don't judge or put opinion on it until you really know if it's real or not," he said. "The only way you're going to know is if there's ever a day that you need somebody like me. Then you'll know. Before then you'll probably never believe in me but the people that I help and walk away with closure moving forward. They're the ones who believed in me. That's why I continue to do what I do."

To this day, Kelsie Schelling remains missing, and her mother’s painful search for the daughter who never came home continues.

“I have to try and keep hope to keep going because I know if I give up then it just goes away and Kelsie's forgotten,” Saxton said. “I will just try and find my hope and my drive wherever I can find it and whoever is brought into my life to make that happen and right now [Griffin] has been brought in my life.”

A British folklore writer is trying to track down witnesses to the famous Wollaton Park gnomes sighting nearly 40 years ago.

Wollaton Park is a deer park in the heart of Nottingham, England. The extraordinary encounter, where six primary schoolchildren claimed to have seen gnomes with caps like old-fashioned nightcaps driving bubble cars around the park, was widely reported by the Nottingham Post and national press and has long fascinated enthusiasts of unexplained phenomena.

Now writer and historian Dr Simon Young wants to conduct an in-depth study into the tale, which happened in September 1979.

The children - Angela Elliott and brother Glen, Andrew Pearce and his sister Rosie, Patrick Olive and Julie (surname unknown), all aged between eight and ten, were on an early evening walk when they claimed to have spotted 60 little men, half their height, with long white beards wearing blue tops and yellow tights.

The children watched them for about a quarter of an hour, as the men drove round in their little cars. Each of the fifteen cars carried two little men. They did not have steering wheels but some kind of circular device with a tiny handle to turn it. The little men were also climbing up into the surrounding trees, going into and emerging from, holes in the trunk or branches.

All of the children felt that they had somehow surprised the little men, who usually would only have come out after night fell. Eventually, the children all ran away, because it was getting late. The little men had not been threatening or aggressive.

The adults who subsequently heard their stories thought that the little group of children were all telling lies, but the children were completely unwavering in their belief that they had seen what they said they had seen.

Dr Young is asking that the children, who would now be in their forties, to get in touch with him.

He said: "The Wollaton Park sightings badly needs a longer study. I would like to interview them about their memories. I will guarantee absolute anonymity. People are understandably very sensitive about these matters."

Some of the youngsters were interviewed on tape by their headmaster Robin Aldridge at Southwold Primary in Radford and Mr Young has acquired a transcript.

He said: "The experience was interesting in several respects. There are many instances of children coming face-to-face with fairies, but I know of none where six saw the fey together.

"So many Fortean experiences depend on a single shaky witness or poor chain of custody for the evidence: this is not the case with Wollaton."

As well as the children, Dr Young would like to talk to their headmaster, parents, uncles and aunts, plus people in the area to find out if there were legends about the gnomes before or after the events in the park.

Dr Young added: "I find the case equally interesting even if it was, as one researcher suggested, got up by the kids to explain a fall in some mud! It is a part of Notts history and the history of children's psychology whatever the original motivation."

The 1979 incident wasn't the first report of gnome sightings in the park.

Prior to the schoolchildren's adventure, Jean E. Dixon had an equally unusual experience in Wollaton Park, according to Nottingham woman Marjorie Johnson, who wrote of sightings in her book Seeing Fairies.

"She was walking there alone, in a pensive mood, when she became aware of the presence of gnomes, who seemed eager to show her some of the various scenes and objects that delighted them. Jean does not see the gnomes but she is given gifts by them: feathers etc," she wrote.

And in a further passage there is another account by Mrs. C. George, of Stapleford, as long ago as 1900.

"She was passing Wollaton Park's gates when she saw some 'little men' dressed like policemen, standing just inside the lodge entrance.

"'They were smiling and looking very happy. They hadn't any wings, and as far as I can remember they were between two and three feet in height," said the report. She also recalled that fairies had been seen dancing around the lake in the park.'"

Anyone with information about the Wollaton Park gnomes can email Dr Young at simonyoungfl@gmail.com.

A similar case happened in Liverpool in 1964 when reports of "leprechauns" began popping up around the Jubilee Park area.

According to the Liverpool Daily Post dated July 2, 1964, the leprechauns were first seen on the night of Tuesday June 30. Nobody knew how the rumor started, but one nine-year-old boy told the Post reporter, Don McKinley that “last night I saw little men in white hats throwing stones and mud at each other on the bowling green. Honest mister, I did.”

Years later, other witnesses, now adults, spoke about their sightings.

“I was one of the school children that saw those leprechauns. I attended Brae Street School and we all saw them popping in and out of a window overlooking the school yard. There were about four of them, all tiny, dressed like a school book idea of a typical gnome and they sat swinging their legs on the window ledge getting in and out. What they were I don’t know. I only know what they looked like. I’d love to know the truth!!!”

Another man told about his experience.

“I certainly remember the leprechauns, and I actually saw a few of them on Kensington Fields, close to the library, but my parents and other adults tried to convince me that I”d been seeing things. This would be one afternoon in early July 1964, around 4.30pm, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was ten at the time and on my way to play football with my mates and saw these little (I’d say just a few inches tall) men dressed in red and black, standing in the grass, looking at me. I’m sure one of them had some type of hat on. I panicked and ran all the way home. My mum said there had been reports of leprechauns and little men on Jubilee Drive and Edge Lane the day before. That same evening crowds turned up on Jubilee Drive, and I remember a girl with a jam jar that she was going to put the leprechauns in!”

Children decended onto Jubilee Park, especially the bowling greens area in search of little men. The crowds grew so large that it became too much for Irish parks constable James Nolan.

"I don’t believe in leprechauns myself", he said. He called in the city police. Police in cars and on motorcycles arrived. They cleared the hundreds of youngsters from the bowling greens — the reported playground of the wee folk — closed the gate, and stood guard. But beyond the bowling green gates the youngsters milled, tiny tots to 14-year-olds. They crammed the top of the covered reservoir for a better view of the bowling green.

Tolerant bobbies wandered about trying to get the youngsters on the move. But the kids would not believe that there weren't any lepreghauns to be found. It was not until after 10pm that the park was cleared.